Get Involved & Help Shape the Future

"Let's Hit the Trails!" Project

What does a city look like where children feel at home? Where can they play, move around safely, and contribute their own ideas? Through the project “Auf die PLÄTZE los!”, school social workers actively involve children—both boys and girls in elementary school—in shaping their city.

Children as Experts

This project is a contribution by the Office of Social Work to the World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026.

Children know their neighborhood from their own daily lives. They know which places they like to visit, where they feel something is missing, and which areas they find challenging or unsafe.

Through various future workshops and participatory projects, they have the opportunity to explore their surroundings, document their observations, and develop their own ideas for public spaces.

In the process, the children take on different roles: they become co-speakers, neighborhood explorers, co-creators, designers, pioneers, artists, and visionaries.

From an Idea to Your Own Project

The forms of participation are as diverse as the neighborhoods themselves.

For example, with the KiEZI backpack and accompanying workbook, children explore their neighborhood and document child-friendly places as well as areas with potential for change.

In Mainz-Kastel, a children’s parliament is being established where children from various institutions can come together to represent their interests.

Other projects focus on the design of public spaces, safe routes to school, art in the neighborhood, cultural events for children, and new ideas for streets and squares.

Digital opportunities are also being explored: In cooperation with Smart City, children use AI-powered tools to develop their own visions for the future of a child-friendly city.

Rethinking the City Together

A special part of the project was the collaboration with Hamburg-based artist Jan Kamensky. Together with children from the school social work program at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn School and the Ursula-Wölfel Elementary School, they developed their own visions for the urban space surrounding the Ringkirche.

The results were presented on April 30, 2026, alongside Kamensky’s visual utopia, during a public event at the Ringkirche.

The event also included a discussion on how cities can be designed so that everyone—especially children—can move around safely, feel at home, and actively participate.

Participation That Lasts Children’s participation is not only a right but also an important foundation for a vibrant and democratic urban society.

When children experience that their opinions are heard and their ideas are taken seriously, they learn firsthand that they can help shape the world around them.

“Auf die PLÄTZE los!” is therefore intended to have an impact beyond the year 2026. The goal is to incorporate children’s perspectives more fully into planning processes in the long term and to further develop participatory structures.

A project by the School Social Work for Children Department as part of WDC 2026. WDC 2026 is funded by the State of Hesse, the City of Frankfurt am Main, and the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.